Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Dog Revalations and Car is Still Dead!

The car is way dead, it turns out. Transmission blown. Poof. Like that. Sadly, this comes only about a month after we dropped $1,300 on a new timing belt, spark plugs, and a belt tensioner. The cost will be somewhere in the vicinity of $1,000 to fix the transmission, and that's with the used-parts kit. The suck of all sucks with this is, right now the car is worth nothing*. If we drop another thousand dollars into it, it may run for another 30,000 miles... or we may blow a rod the week after the repairs are complete. If we do end up sinking the money into the car, we can at least recoup the cost of the repairs and a little more (hopefully). This should give us enough time to have a functioning car that will allow us to drive around and look for another car, then sell this car, and buy another. Bleh.

Did I mention my not liking cars? No? Well, truth be told, I don't like cars.

On a lighter note, the voting for the crazy fact about one of the many dogs Mandy watches is closed. It seems that the readers are going with the patriotic, 9/11 people-saving dog.

DOG!

The truth is, the dog is a Thompson, of the Hunter S. variety. Yes, Bodi's owner is the ex-wife of Hunter. Hunter's son, he keeps his dog at the day car too. I hear ego-Googling is up, so it's likely that these people will come across this blog and find out the secret identity of their dog is now in the requisite domain of the interweb tubes where any Hunter-obsessed sicko can find it. Sadly, these are the times we live in. I don't get a chance to interact with many bona fide celebrities, let alone their dogs, so I hope you'll grant me leave to indulge in this particular instance.

Hunter's dog! I don't love the man. I've never met him. And from what I understand, he was an absolute bastard to interact with in real life. That makes sense, considering how crazy and reckless his writing is. On the other hand, being a bastard and a being a good writer seem to go hand-in-hand. What I can say is I like his writing. He was a great social mover and shaker. Like me, he hated hippies and the laziness they embodied.

*Update: It actually is going to cost $1,500, and we've decided to go ahead with it. I'm not totally sure why, but there it is. Again, hopefully, this will be the last major repair on it for a year or so, and we can continue to drive it. If it bothers us, we will sell it and hopefully break even with these repairs. The transmission is totally gone. Nothing salvageable. It should be done today, so when we get it back, I will post about how it drives like it always had, except a little faster due to the lightness of our wallet. Bleh.